Chapter 19. Tiling

Tiling or tessellation is the covering of a surface with the
repeated use of the same shape tile. A typical example is the
tiling in a bathroom. In Inkscape, this concept is expanded to
include a multitude of options, including progressively changing the
tile size, spacing, and orientation.

At the bottom of the dialog is a fixed section where you can choose
the size of the tiling either by the number of rows and columns or
by the width and height of the area you wish to cover. The terms
Rows and Columns are
only really appropriate for tiling of rectangular tiles (see below).
Checking the “Used saved size and position of the tile”
forces the tiling to use the size and position of the base tile at
the last time the tile was used in a tiling. This preserves the
spacing between tiles if the bounding box has changed due to editing the
base tile.
Clicking on the Reset button
resets most of the entries under the tabs to their default values.
The Remove button can be used to undo a tiling
when the base tile is selected.
The Unclump button can be used to spread out
the clones in a somewhat random fashion (can be repeated). And, finally, the
Create button creates the tiling.

With a circle and the default values (P1 symmetry, two rows and two
columns), you will get the following tiling:

The simple tiling of a circle. The symmetry is "P1" and there are
two rows and two columns.

The circle has been replicated four times in two rows and two
columns. The original circle is still there, under the top-left
cloned circle. The bounding box of the circle has been used as the
base tile size.

This example is not so interesting, but there are many
options under the dialog's tabs that can produce many
interesting effects. Each tab will be covered in turn in the
following sections.